The cafeteria in the US House of Representatives has returned the once villified French moniker to the food items renamed "Freedom Toast" and "Freedom Fries". Sometime last week French Toast and French Fries returned to the menu without the same fanfare as their ouster in 2003, when Republican leaders paraded the change as a "symbolic gesture" against the country that strongly criticized the imminent US invasion of Iraq.
No one in the cafeteria staff is commenting, nor is anybody from the offices of the two Republican leaders who led the frenzied fit against our French ally three years ago. However, the change coincides with one of the leaders, Walter Jones of NC, becoming a harsh critic of the war in Iraq, and the second leader, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, stepping aside from leadership over the House Administration Committee (which oversees food service) because of an FBI investigation into his ties to notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
How ironic that ‘french’ was returned to the House fries the same week that the xenophobic Iranian president ordered his government agencies and newspapers to eliminate 2,000 Western words from their everyday vocabulary including the word ‘pizza’ to be replaced with the farsi translation, ‘elastic loaves’.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the French embassy said that relations between France and America are "back on track".